locked out

On a sunny day (Mon, 03 Jun 2019 08:19:25 -0700) it happened John Larkin wrote in :

Sooner or later 'trickey will go down, and millions will die . As all transport is 'lectric no food in supermarkets, no light, no airco, no cooking, no shaving, no clocks, no alarms, no TV, no radio, no internet, no phone, no freezer, no ..

Not counting trump pushing the wrong button., or pestering the wrong country.

Cloud? bad idea, not safe, Big Brother spying on you, cut off from your data if no connection.

I was just in the attic looking for 5 1/4 inch floppies... Found hand written diary by my mother in 1947, drawings I made back then as a kid, not bad for data retention. No floppies found...

I ended up in court over a real estate deal. My wife keeps a daily diary of all the happenings. During the trial the diary was put to use, I thought oh no, my sex life is going to be in court. Luckily, it didn't happen. We won the court case but F'ing lawyers fees were as much as the lawsuit.

I had a nest a few years back. What a piece of junk. I now have a simple thermostat - set the temp and it will either heat or cool to keep that temp. We live and work out of the house so I dont need some programmable crap.

Amazon stuff is real touchy about net access. They assume always on completely reliable net connection. I've done some test. Unplug the ISP link (local lan up and running) and you can cause a fire-tv to hang, you have to power cycle it. Modern crop of programmers dont seem to understand the concept that the net can and does go down.

Once we design a product with a uP and an FPGA, it's tempting to keep adding features, the theory being that every feature might get us some additional sales. So we have to keep remembering that the basic functions have to be easy to understand and evoke.

My favorite button on my Rigol scope is DEFAULT SETUP. Get me the hell out of here.

In consumer electronics, buttons and LEDs are cheap, and code is cheap, and there are no conventions for user interfaces, and "features" seem to sell. So hidden internal states and bugs profilerate.

A dishwasher needs two buttons, WASH and STOP. Two LEDs, WASHING and DONE. One of ours has a zillion touch-sensitive buttons that operate randomly if someone brushes the front with their belly when they use the sink. You need a flashlight to see what the buttons do, because they are labeled in black print on stainless.

What's AC ?

Brian

Our thermostats are so smart they wouldn't listed to people any more, because they thought they knew better. My wife STRONGLY objected.

So, new rule of smart home projects: if your wife can't figure out how to use it without your help, you have failed.

:-)

Jeroen Belleman

Our washing machine is the same. We got a LG top of the line, rave reviews. Full of buttons and leds. Load sensing, water saving with "True Balance Technology". Another POS. Software bug will say it's out of balance. Dumps water in, sloshes clothes about, starts to spin. Software bug says "out of balance". Dump water in, slosh clothes around, spin ... out of balance ... repeat, repeat and repeat. It wastes a bunch of water trying to balance because of the software bug. The fix is to call the repair tech ($$$) to come replace the control board ($$$). By the time I spend all that money I can buy a new "dumb" washer.

LG dryer is a POS also. "Sensor dry" does not work. We have to put it on timed dry, go check when it "dings", run it some more.

Lowe's has a 35% off washer/dryer sale going on. Time to go get something simple and rid ourselves of the current frustration.

...and the writing had not FADED! (floppies would have looked as if unformatted)

Isn't the loser required to pay all fees?

Air conditioning. We don't actually have any.

If you want a gas stove with a uP control panel, it's like $500 and will break in a year or two. Can you imagine a worse place to put a cheap uP?

If you want one without a uP, prices start around $2K, $4K for the good stuff.

We have a dual stacked gas oven in the kitchen, came with the house. For some reason, the upper section has digital controls and the lower one is old-fashioned, pneumatic or something. Guess which one still cooks?

We store pots in the upper one.

Yes, THIS! Every button you add make the other ones less useful, less findable, more cognitive load. It doesn't matter what text you put behind them or how good the designer of your icon graphics is, you are presenting people with a choice of actions, and they can't choose an action until they've understood what the alternative actions are.

This "need to know" is reduced in children, who just push things and observe outcomes, which is why older adults often need to get a child to help with technology like remote controls, etc.

Clifford Heath.

This was in Michigan 30+ years ago, I didn't get reimbursed so I doubt it. It gets worse though, during the trial the judge said something like. "I see the defendants attorney paid 'such and such' filing fee for the plaintiff". It went over my head until much, much later when I realized my attorney paid to have have some form filed to keep the case moving. The plantiff was broke, (which is why she sued me) she had no money to keep going so my lawyer paid. I was young and ignorant, didn't really know what happen until it was to later. Details, I sold a house on a rent to own deal with $4,500 down payment. It took the renter several months to pay the whole $4,500. Then at the last minute backed out and sued me. I remember the judge asking my why I sold the house for less $2,000 then the platifffs price, I told him because now I had moved and just wanted out of making double mortgage payments.

Good luck, I'm not sure simple is available. I feel the same about a microwave, give me a mechanical timer over a keypad and several extra buttons. Visited my daughter recently, went to make coffee, I see you can make full pot, small pot, large cup, small cup and a couple other volumes. So I spin the knob to set for one cup, but I can't see the mark to align with the one cup icon. I got out a flashlight and started looking it over, no arrow, no dot. So I called my son over and ask him, he looks for a few seconds, then hits the power bottom leds light up, I see it is set for a small pot, I twist the knob and watch the F'ing pretty leds go around indicating the brew size until I get to one cup. Grrr...

Mikek

I have a neat red plastic drip cone and a plain metal kettle.

We've had a Nest for eight years. We bought it to keep track of the temperature of a house we were selling in another state. When it sold, I moved the thermostat to this house and bought another for the upstairs. They work really well.

Don't use Amazon stuff or any of that ilk. My son gave us some smart speakers for Christmas a couple of years ago. The box is unopened, somewhere in the basement.

I've never had one go bad.

We don't either. But we do have two heat pumps. ;-)